Here, you are urged and encouraged to run your mouths about something important.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Grassley asking why DOJ IG report on Fast and Furious taking so long

Senator Chuck Grassley is rightfully demanding to know where the DOJ IG's report on Fast and Furious is. It's been well over a year since Cynthia Schnedar was allegedly asked to investigate the operation. Considering that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer's deputy, Jason Weinstein, referred to the drafting of the now infamous February 4, 2011 letter as being more difficult than the "Magna Carta," perhaps we already know the answer to Grassley's question. If the two page letter was so difficult to draft - and was later proven to have been demonstrably false - perhaps the IG's report is more difficult than calculating Einstein's theory of relativity.

The ranking Republican on the SenateJudiciary Committee says a Justice Department investigation into the botched “Fast and Furious” gunrunning operation has taken “an awfully long time to finish” and, as a result, “should meet the highest standards of accuracy and independence.”

“Operation Fast and Furious failed to live up to the standards set by the American people, and we need to know how that could ever happen,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who first questioned the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) operation more than a year ago.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asked the inspector general’s office at the Justice Department in February 2011 to investigate the operation after Mr. Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, discovered that ATF had allowed more than 2,000 weapons - including AK-47 assault rifles - to be “walked” across the border to drug smugglers in Mexico.

The origins of this operation have been narrowed down to a group of people that is not all that large so there's really no logical explanation for why it's taking so long. Then again, as the Times points out, the acting IG is not only a Holder lackey but she hasn't even been confirmed by the Senate yet:

Jay Lerner, spokesman for the inspector general’s office, said “the review is ongoing,” but declined to elaborate.

Mr. Grassley initially expressed concern that the investigation was being conducted without an independent Senate-confirmed inspector general running the office. Acting Inspector General Cynthia A. Schnedar has not been through the Senate confirmation process and Mr. Grassley questioned whether she could “challenge senior officials with tough questions.”

Rep. Ted Poe, Texas Republican and a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the inspector general’s review has “taken longer than the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination.” He said the inquiry “comes across that it is being stonewalled until after the election.”

I don't think Holder will be able to wait that long to release the report. In fact, I seem to remember him saying it would only be a couple of months or so when he testified back on February 2nd.